Damon Salvatore Meets His Match
by Last of the Star Makers
Summary: Slice One: The Girl. Damon rescues a small girl from a vicious rainstorm... Slice of Life/One Shot-style chapters featuring Damon Salvatore. See the Chapter One's Author's Notes for more information. In this particular case, 'match' is an idiom referring to someone who is equal to or better than yourself that you will be unable to beat, and not necessarily a romantic 'match.'


_Author's Notes: Greetings The Vampire Diaries fans, and other interested parties! Feel free to skip the following drivel, which contains my thoughts and feelings about the series (though, mind you, you'll be missing out on some context for the writing if you DO skip it), but please be sure to at least take note of the parts which I have in** bold and underlined print**, which contain the most vital information directly pertaining to the story here, or complete lack thereof. Whatever the case may be. Moving on..._

_*SPOILER ALERT IN ALL THE FOLLOWING IF YOU'RE NOT CAUGHT UP TO SEASON FOUR OF THE SHOW*_

_So, this all started because my best friend really wanted me to watch TVP. I have seen all the episodes up to this newest season (I have seen none of season five as of writing this) and I can honestly say that I don't really like the show at all. The writers are horrible, a five year old could give the characters better lines, and I can't blame the actors for the poor delivery of those lines, as some of them are just plain awful. I don't identify with Elena, the Mary-Sue, who has two 'extremely attractive' vampire brothers pining for her love, nor do I particularly care for Edward, uh, I mean Stefan, whose brooding eyebrows make me laugh every time they turn downward and darken his face. Damon is a class S dickward, Caroline is the stereotypical cheerleader nitwit, I hate Klaus with a passion, Tyler annoys me...I think you get the point. The first character I actually liked was Lexi, Edw-uh Stefan's 'best friend evahr.' Then I found out she slept with Damon, and she immediately got deposited in my 'I dislike this character because they slept with Damon' category (One that Caroline/Elena are also placed in). Upon reflecting back in the show once Lexi dropped out of the sacred 'liked' pedestal I had placed her on top of, I looked around the show for another to take her place, as she was the only one I had ever considered for the position. I finally set my sights on Jenna, who got killed off before she could do anything to make me hate her. Heh. The fact that Klaus killed her in and of itself puts him in my I HATE YOU AND YOU'LL NEVER REDEEM YOURSELF category. Yeah, okay, she was pretty dumb, but she did try to do her best with the position she had been given, and she hoped for better times, as any normal human will do. I liked her quite a lot actually, and I found myself rooting more for the ordinary human characters of the show (see Matt below) than the stupid, petty mythological beings who infested the entire story. Witches included. I suppose Bonnie's Grandma is okay, and her old-sass in that one scene with Damon made me bounce in my seat a little from excitement, so I would have to admit to liking her a lot as well. My other favorite character Matt, whom I liked again for the fact that he was just a lowly human stuck in the midst of all this chaos, went down several notches of respect with me when he decided to trounce about the world with Rebekah, another of the vampires who got turned too early in their development and have their brains eternally stuck at like 15 and can never grow up because they're frozen at that age FOREVER. No offense to anyone 15 who is reading this, because you'll eventually grow older and your brain will develop all the way until you are 25, where it will stop and your cognitive processes (in ideal conditions) will be at their most mature. My biggest problem with the "vampire" idea as a whole is that their brain CAN'T develop past whatever point they were turned and so half the time they end up acting like squabbling children rather than mature adults. And that's probably the biggest reason why I can't stand this (or any other vampire-themed) show. (Okay, Damon doesn't act like a squabbling child, but he was something like 24 when he got turned and at least his brain is almost completely developed)_

_After we finished the last season, I started having TVP dreams, as I always do with any show I watch constantly for an extended period of time and then suddenly stop doing so, the first of which featured Elena, Damon, and Stefan. Sarcasm: My joy knew no bounds. More recently though, Damon has been haunting my dreams (I've had...what like two or three of them now?), which is something my best friend teases me with every time I tell him about it (he's a HUGE Delena fanatic), saying that I have a crush on Damon, ect. ect. I'll begrudgingly admit to anyone actually reading this that physically, Damon is who I would be attracted to, were he not such a gigantic douchebag, because he has the black hair/blue eyes thing going for him. The personality is a no-go for me though, plus the fact that he's slept with everyone and their mother and doesn't regret it in the least. Rude. The dreams, though, started the creative juices flowing, and thus birthed this series._

_**The chapters are going to be one-shot, slice of life styles, and they might have nothing to do with each other at all, or some semblance of a story may emerge eventually.**__ They might jump around, they might be sequential or on the same theme, but the main character will always be Damon Salvatore. The over-arching theme, if you hadn't guessed is going to be about Damon meeting his match, as the title suggests. If you have ideas about other things Damon could meet his match with, feel free to share. I've got a couple of main ideas going, and one or two silly ones, but there won't really be much updating on this story since I don't have any direction with it._

_This first chapter will contain several scenes, partially to make up for my ridiculously long Author's Notes, but the others will likely be much shorter snippets of scenes, which are indicated in this chapter with horizontal lines._

_**Unless I state otherwise, you can assume that in relation to when these should be fit into the series, they take place before Elena is a vampire, when she and Stefan are still together, likely somewhere in Season One before Klaus is actually mentioned.**__ Keep in mind that I am going to tend to take what I consider to be a characters most obvious personality trait and over-dramatize it a bit, so Elena might just seem more like a popular high school twit than she really is, and Stefan might seem more like a brooding, moody, slightly less intelligent than his brother, petty vampire than he really is, but don't take it personally. Damon wouldn't..._

* * *

Slice One: The Girl

. . .

Damon lifted his face to the torrential downpour and closed his eyes, letting the elements rage about him as he stood in the midst of the raging flood, not caring one whit that his clothes were nearly soaked to their core. He couldn't get sick anyway. The clothes were merely a minor inconvenience in the first place, a convention hammered into him from his few years of being a human. He would have much preferred to go around everywhere without them, but hadn't had the thought when he'd escaped from the house moments ago to discard them before leaving. He'd just been aiming to leave, and leave fast.

The rain pelted the lids of his eyes, his cheeks, his arms, and he let it, standing absolutely still as the sheets of rain struck him, the whirling of the wind failing to move him from his planted feet.

The Salvatore Boarding House was not that far behind him, and the trees that lined the clearing in which the House stood were not that far away from in front of him either.

He stood content in the darkness, the light from the house not reaching nearly that far in the current storm, arms at his sides as he let the rain cleanse his mind of its turmoil.

_Elena._

Damon shook his head violently and his rain-soaked hair briefly adding to the downpour, though only slightly.

She had popped in for a visit before the storm began and while Damon knew Stefan could have quickly and easily carried her back to her house he, of course, had not, and she was now stuck with them for possibly the entire night.

Damon didn't know how much more he could take of it. He ached to be in there with her, and yet for all of his internal pining, could not at times stand to watch her faun over his younger brother.

So, instead of seeking refuge in the house from the storm, he sought refuge in the storm from the inhabitants of the house.

He lowered his head back down and blinked away part of the rain, gazing across the line of trees into the blackness of the night between the trunks.

A run might do him some good. Maybe he'd stumble across some sort of wayfarer caught unintentionally in the storm. Some nobody that wouldn't be missed. They would be hard enough to find in the wet, the rain constantly washing away any tracks, any scent. A hunt might do him some good, get his mind off things.

Just as Damon had decided upon his course of action, he caught a bit of extraneous movement beyond the trees, something that was not the branches tearing about madly in the wind or the undergrowth whipping wildly about.

Keeping quiet, he shifted his weight slightly, trying to get a better look through the rain, cautiously pinning this as a sign he should be on the hunt.

Whatever stumbled among the trees was not making its way towards him, but farther away from the clearing, and Damon quietly ducked into the forest after it.

His footsteps no louder than ever, they were especially drowned out by the turbulent storm, even in the cover of the canopy of branches above him.

The movement he tracked stopped suddenly, and Damon's curiosity got the better of him so that instead of waiting as he normally would have, he jumped up into the nearest tree, feet alighting steadily, and hopped from his tree to the next, peering below to spot his prey.

He nearly fell out of the tree when he spied, not the adult prey that he imagined, but instead a young girl, no more than eight, if even that.

Damon looked around as the wind tore about him in a fury, howling in anguish amidst the madly falling rain.

Not caring to think twice, he dropped out of the tree and scooped the tiny girl up in his arms, sheltering her with his body as much as possible from the elements He dashed back towards the house, ruefully lamenting his decision to allow the rain to soak him through as well, glad however that he didn't venture out in only his skin.

He made it through the front door-being sure to close it behind him-without incident, thanking his luck he didn't run into either Stefan or Elena on the way to his bedroom.

Stopping his rapid movement once safely past his door, he shut it with a foot and quickly walked the distance to his bathroom, still cradling the small child in his arms.

Damon couldn't tell if the shaking she did was a shiver from the cold, or if the girl was crying, or what.

He snatched a towel from nearby and sat down on the floor, letting his grip become less solid and protecting as he wanting to see how she was faring.

As he started to let go, the girl's hand clutched at his shirt and she buried her face in his chest.

"It's okay. You're alright now." Damon gently placed the towel over her head, cradling the girl and rocking her a bit in his arms as he tucked the towel around her as best he could without moving her. He moved bits of her hair out of her face as he could, though she mostly kept herself buried between his arm and his side.

He heard her sniffle in the space between and he smirked.

"It can't possibly smell very good over there. I haven't taken a shower since this morning."

Damon's smile grew bigger when the little girl huffed a laugh, sniffing again and starting to move.

"Can you stand?" Damon asked, unfolding his legs to give her a circle to stand in.

She said nothing, but manage to get up with his help, standing barefoot with her head turned down in front of him.

"There you are. Much better."

The towel had fallen around her shoulders, and she peeked shyly out at her dark savior from behind a veil of wet hair that hung limply around her face.

Damon reached behind her and grabbed for the towel, smiling and dropping it over her head, beginning to stand up and rubbing the towel on her head a bit.

"Use that to dry off, hm?" When he stood up, his clothes started dripping on the tile floor and he made a face, "Looks like I need to dry off too. And we could both do with a change of clothes."

Stepping on the backs of his shoes one by one, he managed to slip them off his feet without bending down, starting to take his shirt off at roughly the same time.

When he had the shirt over his head, arms raised, he caught the girl peering out from under the curtain of her towel and he felt rather naked and exposed under her gaze, quickly lowering his arms and coughing to hide his discomfort. He dropped the shirt to the floor and bent down to remove his socks.

Damon refrained from completely stripping in front of the girl, feeling uncomfortable enough in front of her without the shirt. He put his hand on her head and steered her into the bedroom.

"You'll need something to change into as well, I suppose." He left her and walked over to his drawers, digging around in them.

He suddenly snapped his fingers, and turned to his closet, pulling the first shirt he saw down, not realizing until after that it was a button-up dress shirt, but shrugging and taking it anyway as it would be a bit longer to cover the girl more.

Damon threw the shirt on his bed and went behind the girl, putting his hands on her shoulders and moving her towards the shirt.

"Here. You change into this. I'll go change in there. Just...throw your wet clothes in a pile somewhere. I'll take care of them." He left her, going back towards the bathroom, "And I promise I won't come out until you're finished. And dry off a bit while you're at it."

Damon stripped completely once in the bathroom, making sure the door was closed behind him first of course. He grabbed another clean towel and scrubbed his hair with it, using the cloth to dry off the rest of his body as well before clucking his tongue at himself for forgetting to take clean clothes from the dresser with him.

Wrapping the towel around his waist, Damon slowly opened the bathroom door, peering carefully beyond it into his room.

The girl he had rescued lay in the middle of his bed, apparently exhausted, not having bothered to even snuggle up underneath the covers, but instead collapsing on the top of everything.

Her clothes were in a discarded pile at the edge of the bed, and Damon turned back to the bathroom, grabbing for his own wet things, and striding out into his bedroom unashamed in his towel now that the girl was oblivious to the world, collected her things as well.

He paused for a moment at the side of the bed, reaching over and moving a strand of still-damp hair from in front of the girl's mouth, catching himself smiling at her peaceful expression, her knobby knees covered by the edge of his dress shirt she wore, almost reaching down to the bottom of her shins, and the rest of her disheveled hair spread willy-nilly over his pillows. He was impressed that she had managed to get her head up there. The rest of her body was so haphazardly thrown onto his bed that he wouldn't have been surprised to find her mid-way down the bed nowhere near the headboard and the pillows.

Damon chuckled quietly, leaving the girl to her sleep and heading for the dryer to throw their clothes inside...

* * *

"Lemme get this straight."

Damon Salvatore afforded his younger brother the moment to think, his expression unyielding to any of Stefan's initial opinions of his actions, though he leaned forward and rested his elbow on his knee, putting his chin in his hand in an act of deep interest in whatever Stefan decided to say next.

Stefan gestured with one hand towards Damon's room.

"You..._found..._this girl, this child, and brought her home."

"Your astuteness has always astounded me, brother." Damon raised an eyebrow, but made no move to interrupt his stance from where he sat on the couch.

"You let her...in here. In this house." He pointed with both hands down at the floor of the Salvatore Manor.

"Again, your deductions would cause even the most highly trained of detectives pause for thought." Damon replied, flashing his eyes at Stefan, but making no attempt to disguise the dry wit he employed.

As usual, Stefan didn't catch on, too caught up in his own world to take notice. Damon could have stood up and stripped off all his clothing to run laps around the room and Stefan likely would not have batted an eye.

The thought amused Damon and his lips twitched upwards into a smirk.

"I canNOT believe you right now." Stefan narrowed his eyes at Damon, assuming the smirk was somehow related to their current conversation, "Did you-" Stefan stopped himself, checking his volume and moving in closer to the couch, beginning again at a lower volume, "Did you feed on her?"

The word came out of his mouth in a most unpleasant way, as usual, as Stefan never made any attempts to mask his disdain for his older brother's habits.

At this, Damon stood and moved to the tall, narrow table set with decanters and bottles containing various amounts and types of alcohol, leaving his brother's question hanging delightfully in the air.

"Tell me that you at least had your pants on while you were around her." Stefan motioned towards Damon's gleaming chest, still slightly damp from his venture into the ravaging rain, and the white towel that covered everything waist-down.

"I, for one, canNOT believe how rudely you're acting towards our new guest when you haven't even met her yet." Damon commented as he smoothly uncorked and poured his favorite brandy into a shot glass, lifting it up to the light and swirling the contents about before he re-corked the bottle and replaced it back where it went. "And of course I had pants on when I was around her. She's a little bit too young yet to be trying to jump Damon Salvatore." Damon took a drink of the beverage and smacked his lips, "Give it another decade or so, though..."

"So you fed on her." Stefan said bluntly, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Honestly, Stefan, I don't really know what the big deal is."

"The big deal is that you still haven't answered my question."

"And I'm not really sure what business it is of yours who I do or do not feed from."

"I'm pretty sure it becomes my business when your choice of blood is someone not yet old enough to know any better."

"Oh, is there an under-eighteen law for blood now too? Going to call the sheriff and have me arrested for under-aged drinking, hm?"

"And just who exactly are you giving alcohol, Damon?" Elena walked into the living room and moved over to Stefan. Her expression was more one of amusement than Stefan's look of derision, but the sight of the two of them together still stung Damon every time.

Though, he did notice her immediate discomfort at his toweled appearance, the expression on her face bringing him that smug sense of satisfaction he got each time he managed to catch her off-guard in that respect.

"No one, Elena." Damon pronounced her name crisply.

"He's just feeding on a child."

"You're WHAT?" Elena exclaimed, all semblance of humor and discomfort gone from her face.

"Oh, I'm not feeding on a child." Damon lifted the glass to his lips and took a long sip.

"So, you're not, now, are you?" Stefan retorted.

Taking the glass down, Damon gestured with it towards him, but aimed his next statement at Elena, "I never said I was feeding on anybody, but Stefan here decided that I have been."

"Well, what else am I supposed to think?"

"Wait, wait, wait, what exactly is going on here?" Elena looked from Stefan to Damon, then back to Stefan.

"He's just got his boxers in a bunch over nothing." Damon took another drink of the brandy.

"He's got a child in his room."

Elena didn't know how to take that news.

"Do you?" She turned back to Damon.

"Do I what?" Damon said between drinks.

Elena gave him a look.

"Okay, okay, fine. Yes, I have a child in my room." Damon rolled his eyes toward the ceiling as if seeking help from somewhere beyond the confines of the house.

"And you're feeding on him." Elena continued.

"Her." Damon corrected, "And no." He finished quickly when Elena looked as if to protest his decisions. "Why would I feed on some poor defenseless child?"

"Why would you bring her into the house in the first place? These are just two of many questions that Damon Salvatore refuses to answer." Stefan retorted.

"That's because I answer to no one." Damon dipped his head slightly as he lifted the glass to his lips one last time and threw back the last of its contents.

"Seriously, Damon? What's going on?" Elena's last question sounded more like a statement of demand.

"Absolutely nothing you need to worry your pretty little head about." Damon smiled his best smile at her and replaced his shot glass on the table and turned to leave.

"I'm not done talking to you, Damon!" Stefan yelled after him.

"But I'm done talking with you, brother!" Damon stuck one hand in a pocket and waved the other at the couple he left behind him, determined not to look back or answer another one of their meaningless drivel...

* * *

"...not any of his business what I do anyway." Damon muttered to himself as he finally reached his bedroom and closed the door behind him. "He's practically seven years younger than me, and yet he acts as if he's the older one half the time."

Damon huffed out an exasperated breath into the room around him, and moved over to his dresser drawers to pull out clothes.

He stepped into the bathroom and threw his towel over the side of the shower, pausing for half a moment to admire himself in the mirror before putting on the clothes he grabbed.

Damon wasn't about to let his brother get all uppity about Damon sleeping _naked _next to the girl. Not that Damon would have felt particularly comfortable doing so anyway. He did have a certain sense of dignity to keep.

Walking back out into the bedroom, Damon was pleased to see that the girl was still sound asleep.

The bed was big enough that Damon didn't even have to consider going and sleeping on the couch. The thought did stretch a grin across his lips, especially if someone like Elena just happened to walk through...

Damon shook his head. No, he needed to stay here for when the girl woke up in the morning, likely confused at her surroundings.

Throwing back the covers and climbing into the other side of the bed, Damon pulled the sheet up to cover his bare chest, checking one last time on the girl before laying his head down on the pillow and falling asleep...

* * *

_Welp, there it is, for what it's worth. I've got a couple of other ideas, so this might get updated here and there, but I promise the Author's Notes won't ever be that long again. Bless your face! If you sneezed while reading this series of one-shots, bless you. Peace off!_


End file.
